u/bergebis

A follow up to my post about French designs that could have been added instead of the Leopard 1a5BE, I wanted to suggest a way to "make lemonade from lemons"

It's clear that in nearly every functional aspect, the Leopard 1a5BE is a clone of the other Leopard 1a5's in the game, and especially for a tree like France, copy-paste is the last thing (almost) anyone wants right now, so here's a solution:

When the AMX-30C2 (or another French 9.3 design) gets added to the game, the Leopard 1a5BE should be given it's unique Belgian ammo, and the MEXAS turret that Belgium tested for upgrades to it's MBT fleet, and moved up to BR 10.0.

This works because it makes the tank more unique, reinforces a line up with fewer French options, and provides a notable difference in capabilities from what could be added to French 10.0.

While other French tree 10.0 additions can still be added, like VAB CTA 40, AMX-40e4, SK-105A3, Sabiex SK-105A2, and Leopard 1BE 3105 (depending on ammo selection), the Leopard 1a5BE is already in game, so this moves the vehicles from meh copy-paste to somewhat interesting and unique addition.

Source for the Leopard 1a5BE

Source for the MEXAR 105mm ammo

New ammo additions are not unprecedented either, just look at the recent 75mm British APHE or the French EBR-1954 getting PCOT-P

edit: the m1128 reload is actually slower

A follow up to my post about French designs that could have been added instead of the Leopard 1a5BE, I wanted to suggest a way to "make lemonade from lemons"

It's clear that in nearly every functional aspect, the Leopard 1a5BE is a clone of the other Leopard 1a5's in the game, and especially for a tree like France, copy-paste is the last thing (almost) anyone wants right now, so here's a solution:

When the AMX-30C2 (or another French 9.3 design) gets added to the game, the Leopard 1a5BE should be given it's unique Belgian ammo, and the MEXAS turret that Belgium tested for upgrades to it's MBT fleet, and moved up to BR 10.0.

This works because it makes the tank more unique, reinforces a line up with fewer French options, and provides a notable difference in capabilities from what could be added to French 10.0.

While other French tree 10.0 additions can still be added, like VAB CTA 40, AMX-40e4, SK-105A3, Sabiex SK-105A2, and Leopard 1BE 3105 (depending on ammo selection), the Leopard 1a5BE is already in game, so this moves the vehicles from meh copy-paste to somewhat interesting and unique addition.

Source for the Leopard 1a5BE

Source for the MEXAR 105mm ammo

New ammo additions are not unprecedented either, just look at the recent 75mm British APHE or the French EBR-1954 getting PCOT-P

This is a quick analysis that's done in the same vein as a few of my other posts like:

• Leopard 2a4
• Tigers at 5.7
• An aggregate review of tanks that appear in multiple nations.

In Summary, Gaijin is dropping the Leopard 1a5 from 9.3 to 9.0 on the grounds that it's not properly balanced.

If you look at the Average 1a5 performance, you'll see that it's average K/D in June was 1.03, vs an average KD of 1.27 at 9.3 (image 1), so on the surface it does appear to be an outlier, but as with many of Gaijin's decisions, it fails to account for average operator experience.

As I've shown before, Big-3 players are, on average, less experienced than operators of the same vehicle in minor nations, so they artificially drag down vehicle performance metrics.

Remove Germany from the mix, and you get an average of 1.25 K/D, very close to the overall 1.27 K/D average at 9.3 (though lower than the 1.45 K/D average for non-big 3 9.3 mbts) (images 2 and 4). Notably, (see Images 3 and 4) when the big 3 are thrown out, there are several 9.3 mbts with lower K/Ds than the Leopard 1a5.

It's very cluttered, but I've also shown two graphics at the end with ALL 9.3 MBTs (image 3) and all non-big 3 9.3 mbts (image 4). The big stand outs there are that if the Leopard 1a5 is going down, a similar decision should probably be made for the STRV 105, AMX 32 (105), and Magach 6B Gal, which sit below the Leopard 1a5's non big 3 K/D average of 1.25.

Personally I don't really think the Leopard 1a5 needs to go down to begin with, and more than that, I have no Idea what Gaijin is doing on the balancing front.

edit: luckily they just reverted the change

We're now a little over 3 weeks past the release of Update Heavy Cavalry and I wanted to see what people's thoughts were. Generally I've gathered that overall reception to the update was pretty lackluster, especially with the tone-deaf dev server feedback post, as well as the duplicate vehicle justification post, but how do people feel individual nations made out?

I've done a first pass at what I think the three biggest winners and losers of the update are, but I mostly play ground, so there's always the chance that from an Air RB, or naval, or Sim perspective, another nation got a Gem (or stinker) that I've not properly accounted for.

A few notes:

1. Really unsure where to rank Germany. While on paper they got quite a few additions, and Hummel is really crowd please, every German plane added was a premium.
2. All three at the bottom are probably interchangeable
   1. Israel's additions don't really do much to address issues in the tree, so unless a 10.7 addition to Israel is expected in the next update, the Hunter really makes little impact, sitting orphaned at its BR.
   2. Sweden's additions are, frankly, pretty pointless. Neither addresses real issues with the tree, and while I don't play enough air to speak with authority on the plane, I've seen almost none when I do join air battles
   3. Unsurprisingly, France continues to get copy-pasted US/GB/GER vehicles instead of French ones. Add to it that Belgium's first ship is going to Germany instead of Benelux, and there's really no sign of France getting any French designs (or even unique Benelux ones) anytime soon.

I'd be interested to hear other's thoughts on update, both overall, and on a nation by nation basis.

In all seriousness, the mode is awesome and everyone aught to try it for a few rounds, even if CAS is an issue. But if you teammate pulls a VFW or the QF 3.7 Ram, you might spend more time competing for kills than having to worry about winning.

I'm by no means a game designer, but in light of all the recent hubbub, especially around how Warthunder Ground has been effectively just the same gamemode for 10+ years, I wanted to look at the the gameplay at a few different levels to see where the game could benefit from a little extra focus.

In summary, the base level gameplay for the game, while still saddled with some bugs, is in a pretty good state, but the lack of depth on top of it really takes away from the overall experience. The lack of variety in game modes and (most) map designs, along with the homogenization of trees, mostly due to copy-paste subtrees, means that layers of depth to the game are sorely missing.

This is by no means an end-all, be-all, way of looking at the issues in game, but I think it's a helpful framework for starting to approach in game issues.

I know that the Benelux subtree has lead to a fair bit of discourse since it's addition, and while I think that's an important discussion to continue, I want to raise something a little more meta to everyone's attention that's being discussed more in the forums: The Artvelde situation and how Benelux is not a good faith effort in making a subtree.

For those who aren't aware, Germany is getting a new ship this update, the K4 Lorelei. It just so happens that the Lorelei is a reflagged name for the Belgian escort cruiser BNC Artevlede, captured in 1940. The core of the situation is that the developers have stated it is company policy not to add the same specific ship under multiple configurations to the game, so once one is added, that's it.

This means that the developers modeled a Belgian ship and made the active decision to give it to Germany instead of Benelux. Forum users brought this up 6 days before the dev server feedback post, here, with roughly the same engagement level as with the Belgian vs Dutch F-16AM poll. But, unlike with the F-16, where either choice meant giving France an imported design AND didn't inconvenience a major tree, in this case the feed back was ignored.

There's obviously still plenty to discuss regarding if Benelux actually addresses France's weaknesses, if their ties to France justify a tree, and if the current implementation is any good, I know I have my opinions on the matter, but irregardless, it appears that the Snail doesn't view Benelux as a a set of ingame nations worth getting priority for its own designs.

Abstract (TL;DR):

Since we can't look at premium sales numbers, matches played gives us the closest analogy we can find at this time. In order to compare trees on an equal basis, I normalized total premium vehicle matches played against the total for each nation at Rank V. Trend wise Germany, France, and Israel appear to be the biggest deviations from what's expected, indicating certain aspects of their trees may not appeal to players the same way other trees/premiums do.

Background:

Earlier this week I saw an interesting comment from someone, pointing out the the Rank VII Leopard 2a4 OTCo was actually less popular than the Rank VI AMX-30 Super in terms of player count. As I looked into it I saw some interesting trends and wanted to start a bit of a discussion about it.

Methodology:

I totaled all the premium vehicle matches played per nation and per Rank from V-VII. I then removed the Senrai totals as they are not found in every tree and people may be buying them for reasons unaffiliated with the actual vehicle or tree. I then normalized each nations values against Rank V to have a set base point, and used a LOG Y scale to better spot outliers. All data from May 2026 in Statshark.

Trends:

• Rank VII is VERY popular and blows the two other ranks out of the water
• Germany bucks the Big three trend of a big increase to Rank VII
• Rank VI has several trees that are very light on premiums (USA only has one of PC for example)
• Israel Rank V is a ghost town (1% of the French match count at Rank V)
• Israel sees practically as many matches at Rank VI as VII
• France has the most popular Rank V count (~ twice that of the big three)
• Britain and China are also low outliers at Rank V
• France is the only tree to continuously shed matches played as the rank increases.

Conjecture:

Obviously this is a stand in for sales numbers, vehicles stay on the market varying amounts of time, and there are many factors ongoing, but here are a few thoughts:

1. Premium vehicles without line ups are less popular, relatively speaking. This is obvious, and I'm not sure why the devs would add vehicles that don't have line ups, but it's liekly that vehicles like the 2a4m and 2a4 OTCo suffer in terms of use because of it.
2. Players generally prefer domestically designed premiums. This is one of the reasons I think the selection of the F-16AM as the French tech tree is setting the premium up for less than stellar sales, we already know that the NF-5a sees much less match time than the Mirage F1 pack, and we see the same trend with every single ground premium from Rank V-VII EXCEPT for the leopard 1a5.
3. Israeli, French, and Germany high tier experiences may need more lineups and variety given they each buck their respective trends with regards to Rank VII.

Interested to hear thoughts from others as well.

We're at half a year without any actual French tanks or planes having been added (BP ELC aside), and Gaijin continues to lay on the CTRL C, CTRL V method of expanding France via Germany and America's leftovers.

Here's a list of 7 French vehicles that could actually fit in the same BR bracket, and would be new content instead of copy-paste.

Read more:

• AMX-30C2
• ERC TTB190
• Piranha 10x10 TML-105
• AMX-10RC TML-105 Late
• AMX-10 TTB140 - There's also this turret on an ERC hull, but that's more 9.7 material
• VBC TTB190
• Shark FL20